September 13, 2018

LOADSTAR:

Everywhere American Republicans turn, they see progressives and liberals more energised than in any election cycle in recent memory and for one reason: Trump. Like so much of what Trump does, the effect he promised to have on American politics is the opposite of what he has delivered. His followers expected that a wave of robust nationalist populism would sweep like-minded Trumpstyle candidates into office on the crest of waves of popular legislation, executive action and a new, permanent political realignment. They believed that Washington's infamous swamp would be drained, and that a new era had arrived.

Instead, despite an apparently thriving economy, the country is moving left, ideologically, electorally, emotionally. Washington's corruption and dysfunction are more obvious than at any time since the Teapot Dome scandal of 1921. The Republican cry that Democrats are socialists is increasingly met largely with a shrug from the broader public.

Bereft of successes outside of a tax bill that benefits multi-billion dollar American corporations, a handful of judicial appointments and a few executive orders, Republicans are reeling. The Grand Old Party is now a mere extension of Donald Trump, a personal political fiefdom with no ideological lodestar other than obsequious fealty to the President. Republicans bear the political (and moral) burdens of every one of Trump's detriments, mistakes, errors and daily displays of instability.

When your party fails to resist Donald's objectively racist policies you don't get to complain that voters perceive the Party as racist too.